The promise of the 1960s that research with newborns would provide the techniques for assessing the antecedents of later behavior has not been fulfilled. The newborn has become more complicated to study as the initial techniques unfolded the complexity of the young infant's attributes. The changing attitude toward the notion of behavioral continuity and the shifting zeitgeist have decreased the liklihood of developing the basic data necessary for assessing certain theoretical and practical aspects of neonatal behavioral technology. The proposal is designed to examine the correlates of sucking, and classical and instrumental conditioning of newborn behavior in order to develop some of the techniques necessary to assess sensory capacities, general psychological status and the limits of the processes available to the infant at birth. A number of procedural and process related questions will be simultaneously developed in these areas using newly emerging or theoretically meaningful syntheses of previous data. The precedures will be integrated on an ongoing basis aimed at validating the assumptions underlying each of the generalizations made from the emerging data. Along with the use of the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale, each of the processes tested will be examined in terms of its potential contribution to understanding individual differences.